Sandy Does Southeast Asia

I hate it when people ask about my writing. On crankier days, I even resent it because it seems to me there should be a general understanding that people who write do so because they feel at least some discomfort with verbal communication. If they don’t lack the skill altogether, they at the very least approach it as one might a second language – possible but not preferable. And when I say ‘they,’ I of course mean me. I mean that I can never speak intelligently about my own writing.

Yesterday a woman friend dropped the Most Dreaded Question: what are you writing about? If I had any sense at all, I would formulate a stock response to use in this situation but in any case I haven’t and so I had to fall back on my stellar extemporaneous speaking skills. “Oh, just about stuff,” I said.

“I see,” she said. “What sort of stuff?”

“About Nong Khai, I guess. You know, living in Nong Khai. Trying to get a sense of the place and life here. Oh, you know. Yeah,” I ended eloquently.

She looked at me as though she had suspected it before but now was sure I had something to hide.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m not really writing about the Mut Mee community.”

“Well, that’s good,” she replied pointedly. “But I still have no idea what you’re writing about.”

I told her that my last two essays were about monks and about cross-cultural relationships. Unfortunately, I couldn’t stop there. I started babbling nonsensically about how fascinated I am by the seemingly large population of older men in Nong Khai who are here doing nothing I can see other than marrying Thai women and drinking themselves to death. She raised her eyebrows and said that she doesn’t get out enough to know who these people are. Then I really knew I should stop. This is not a subject Mut Mee people abide well and I know this.

“Oh I’m sure you have,” I continued. “Like the men who have breakfast at the German bakery.”

In a noncommittal tone, she said that yes, she had been there. It was clear that I was wandering off somewhere in a land far beyond simply misjudging my audience but I continued to ramble on about how I really want to write about them but can’t find an in.

“You could just talk to them, I suppose,” she said, in the same way one might suggest conducting interviews in a leper colony.

“Yes of course but that’s not what I mean. I’m talking about a creative in.”

Just then Caroline grabbed her for afternoon meditation. I was left sitting there feeling annoyed with myself. I should know better than to push unpopular topics. And how did I get suckered into that conversation in the first place, when I am well aware that talking about one’s writing – especially half-formulated concepts – is like talking about one’s dreams or sex life. You inevitably come across as either an idiot or a bore, or both. There was also something that left me uneasy about discussing my interest in this particular subject matter.

On my morning bicycle ride today, it struck me that what bothered me was how defensive I have become about my interests and even, by extension, about who I am. I suddenly felt how isolating it is to only have one friend here who generally shares my way of looking at the world and understands the things I say, and how anxious I am that he’s about to leave for a couple of months.

What I should have said, if I absolutely felt I had to defend myself, is that while it is easy to write beautiful words about beautiful things, it is about as interesting as shooting fish in a barrel. That isn’t even art, to me. True artistry is the ability to take a subject that most people would find sad or ugly and help them to see it as something beautiful. Terrible perhaps, but beautiful nonetheless. Otherwise what am I doing but reinforcing the simplistic way most of us are taught to view the world?

Really though, I don’t want to defend myself or – more to the point – to feel like I have to defend myself, because the truth is that I don’t have to. And I don’t have to because no one is actually expecting me to. I’m just suffering from Small Community Syndrome, the symptoms of which include defensiveness, social paranoia, and an excessive desire to gossip. That’s what I decided. But just to be on the safe side, I’m going to finally put together those few easy-to-remember sentences to parrot back to anyone who asks me what I’m writing.

Tags: Nong Khai, Thailand

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 12th, 2006 at 8:24 pm and is filed under Nong Khai, Thailand. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.